The hire comes as Morgan Stanley is beating Goldman Sachs in some key areas. Morgan Stanley reported earnings of $1 a share on revenue of $9.7 billion in the first three months of 2017 on Wednesday, beating analyst estimates by a lot. That performance was driven by a big rebound in fixed-income sales and trading revenue. Morgan Stanley reported fixed-income revenue of $1.7 billion, up from $873 million.

"We've been very pleased with the performance in that business," Morgan Stanley CFO Jonathan Pruzan said on a call. We're generating "significantly more revenues than before we had that restructuring," he said. "Our market share and momentum in that business has been good ... We feel confident that we will continue to be relevant to our clients."